Thanks for writing this. A lot of How to Be Free from Bitterness is needed for millennial men. Too, zoomers I think grew up with a kind of jadedness to society, whereas millennials grew up with a lot more utopianism and sheltering, so there is a lot more pain that leads them to the red pill. Hoping they shape up, but a lot of my counseling these days has to do with getting them to take responsibility for themselves and stop looking for daddy figures.
One more thing: within the Reformed community the thing that I am noticing hurts millennials the most is that there is so much instruction but it's all theoretical and then when they start getting actual stuff to apply, they overreact since they've been told they have been getting good teaching but so much of it was intellectual and cerebral and very few simple habits were recommended.
I remember Jay Adams stated good preaching is good counselling. In other wards the Christian faith is very practical. Adams was big on mentorship and modelling to younger Christians in order to help them acquire practical biblical habits to apply to their lives. How important this task is set before us before a legion of younger generations who have been brainwashed towards victimhood vs personal responsibility.
Jay Adams is interesting since on the one hand, his counseling model is based on homework and focusing on attitudes. The one big problem I see is that all problems are reduced to sin issues, when in fact there may be physical, psychological, or social things that may need to be targeted. The problem that people often struggle with self diagnosis and so if something is not a sin, they may not know how to grow in that area. That's the area where instruction is, in many ways, most needed (hence the popularity of Jordan Peterson's stand up with your back straight).
I've noticed that the guys I talk with in this age group (myself included) tend to say that their dad was present or around but not really engaged. They were just left to themselves without active coaching and discipleship. Not to blame it on boomers but I've been curious to what caused that type of parenting style in boomers. Maybe they saw their parents or the generation before them as too controlling and over corrected the other way. Or just never received that themselves and didn't know what to do. I'd be interested in your take.
If that's not the solution, I think it's a large part of it. In saner times this would be just be happening in childhood/adolescence through the normal raising of a boy in a family with a mom and dad that exists in a community of such families. But this just isn't happening for a lot of them. I know Pastor Foster's talked quite a bit of the issues with abdicating or absent fathers, and this is why a lot of boys (men by now) really took to Jordan Peterson when he blew up. His basic advice was novel because they didn't get it anywhere else. Not their dads, not their uncles, not their church. Lord knows it had a huge effect on me when I heard him (I grew up without a dad yada yada yada).
As for why it's just not a topic of discussion? I'd guess the typical pastor just sees intact families in his congregation so they see no problem. Maybe a smattering of single moms with their kid(s) before the kids are old enough to 'decide' they aren't into the whole church thing and stop going. With the former, encouraging discipleship of boys into men probably isn't seen as a priority because "obviously" their dads are already doing that. With the latter, the typical pastor isn't going to preach or do anything re: the importance of a man in a boy's life because that'll certainly offend quite a few women (look at divorce rates among Christians) and women are the ones filling the collection plates.
Pastors like Foster aside, the boys just aren't a priority. I'm glad he's out there speaking about the importance of fatherhood and discipleship for boys. We need more of that everywhere. Just don't forget us 25-and-ups. Plenty of men well into manhood are still trying to figure it out like the boys are. I've been giving a guy ten years older than me (and I'm in my 30s now) advice he should've gotten from HIS dad when he was half my age, it's that bad out there.
Thanks for writing this. A lot of How to Be Free from Bitterness is needed for millennial men. Too, zoomers I think grew up with a kind of jadedness to society, whereas millennials grew up with a lot more utopianism and sheltering, so there is a lot more pain that leads them to the red pill. Hoping they shape up, but a lot of my counseling these days has to do with getting them to take responsibility for themselves and stop looking for daddy figures.
One more thing: within the Reformed community the thing that I am noticing hurts millennials the most is that there is so much instruction but it's all theoretical and then when they start getting actual stuff to apply, they overreact since they've been told they have been getting good teaching but so much of it was intellectual and cerebral and very few simple habits were recommended.
I remember Jay Adams stated good preaching is good counselling. In other wards the Christian faith is very practical. Adams was big on mentorship and modelling to younger Christians in order to help them acquire practical biblical habits to apply to their lives. How important this task is set before us before a legion of younger generations who have been brainwashed towards victimhood vs personal responsibility.
Jay Adams is interesting since on the one hand, his counseling model is based on homework and focusing on attitudes. The one big problem I see is that all problems are reduced to sin issues, when in fact there may be physical, psychological, or social things that may need to be targeted. The problem that people often struggle with self diagnosis and so if something is not a sin, they may not know how to grow in that area. That's the area where instruction is, in many ways, most needed (hence the popularity of Jordan Peterson's stand up with your back straight).
I've noticed that the guys I talk with in this age group (myself included) tend to say that their dad was present or around but not really engaged. They were just left to themselves without active coaching and discipleship. Not to blame it on boomers but I've been curious to what caused that type of parenting style in boomers. Maybe they saw their parents or the generation before them as too controlling and over corrected the other way. Or just never received that themselves and didn't know what to do. I'd be interested in your take.
If that's not the solution, I think it's a large part of it. In saner times this would be just be happening in childhood/adolescence through the normal raising of a boy in a family with a mom and dad that exists in a community of such families. But this just isn't happening for a lot of them. I know Pastor Foster's talked quite a bit of the issues with abdicating or absent fathers, and this is why a lot of boys (men by now) really took to Jordan Peterson when he blew up. His basic advice was novel because they didn't get it anywhere else. Not their dads, not their uncles, not their church. Lord knows it had a huge effect on me when I heard him (I grew up without a dad yada yada yada).
As for why it's just not a topic of discussion? I'd guess the typical pastor just sees intact families in his congregation so they see no problem. Maybe a smattering of single moms with their kid(s) before the kids are old enough to 'decide' they aren't into the whole church thing and stop going. With the former, encouraging discipleship of boys into men probably isn't seen as a priority because "obviously" their dads are already doing that. With the latter, the typical pastor isn't going to preach or do anything re: the importance of a man in a boy's life because that'll certainly offend quite a few women (look at divorce rates among Christians) and women are the ones filling the collection plates.
Pastors like Foster aside, the boys just aren't a priority. I'm glad he's out there speaking about the importance of fatherhood and discipleship for boys. We need more of that everywhere. Just don't forget us 25-and-ups. Plenty of men well into manhood are still trying to figure it out like the boys are. I've been giving a guy ten years older than me (and I'm in my 30s now) advice he should've gotten from HIS dad when he was half my age, it's that bad out there.